


Loveless

by TheVioletHour (TinternAbbey)



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, Fairy Tales, Snow White - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 17:10:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19066999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinternAbbey/pseuds/TheVioletHour
Summary: Once upon a time there was a princess with a face as white as frost, hair as red as autumn leaves, and (according to her mother), a heart as black as night.





	Loveless

**Author's Note:**

> I attempted to retell Cheryl’s story like a fairy tale, deriving mainly from Snow White. 
> 
> Fun fact about Snow White: in the German version of the story, it was originally Snow White’s real mother who tried to kill her. The Grimms later changed her into a stepmother to make it less traumatizing for children.

Deep among the maple trees, a kingdom blossomed.

Syrup flowed and so did blood, and the royal family thrived on both. They grew richer and more beautiful with each generation, looking down upon the world from the thorny heights of their palace. Their lives should have been as sweet as their maple syrup legacy, as golden as the sun that made their trees grow strong, but instead there was a bitter chill that lived in the depths of the royal palace. It lurked in the corners, cold and far from sweet, for the family had a terrible curse upon them.

The current queen, like every maple queen before her, produced a set of twins. A boy and girl with identical coloring: faces as white as frost and hair as red as autumn leaves.

And for the girl, a heart as black as night.

(Or at least that was what her mother said.)

The twins grew up to be lovely children, though they were not beloved of anyone but each other. Their father the king hardened his heart against them, knowing that one of them would be cruelly taken by the family curse someday. Their mother the queen spent most of her time to herself, staring into a reflection that told her a great many truths: that no one was more beautiful than she, no one more clever than she, no one more pure of mind than _she_.

The prince was usually safe from her scrutiny. He developed a prowess for athletics and brought home trophies that shone golden in the bitter chill of the palace. If he couldn't win his parents' love, he could at least earn their pleasure, and the queen was satisfied.

But the princess had a mind as dark as her heart, filled with unnatural, twisted thoughts. When the princess reached the age of thirteen, the queen caught her watching their young, pretty housemaid. Staring at her soft face and tempting neckline with brazen desire.

It turned the queen to ice.

The maid was promptly fired, sent off in disgrace when the queen accused her of theft. The princess fled to her room and wept in her brother's arms, certain that an additional curse had fallen upon her head.

"You're no more cursed than I am," the prince told her, ever the princess' hero, and she believed him.

There were no more pretty housemaids from that day forward. Only gray-headed crones and an endless slew of handsome young men, whose male charms would surely turn the princess' heart from the path of evil.

(The princess wasn't tempted.)

*

With each passing year, the queen's displeasure grew.

If the princess smiled at a girl, her mother called her wicked.

If she invited a girl to sleep over, her mother called her deviant.

If she turned down a date with an eligible boy, her mother called her _loveless_.

So she built a wall around herself. Turned hard as steel and wore a mask as cool as winter. And let the world believe her heart truly _was_ as black as a moonless night.

_Do your worst, Mumsy_ , the princess thought, emerging from her bedroom with her new, cold mask in place.

She learned to use words that cut like knives and kept most people—both friend and foe—at arm's length. Better to strike first and then shield herself afterwards, then be open and vulnerable.

Better to be _untouchable_ than hurt by the wrong touch.

Only the prince was permitted to climb the walls she had built. Despite all her mother's claims of lovelessness, the prince became her entire world.

Her _soulmate_ , she called him within earshot of her mother, but the queen never objected. Never called it _deviant_.

It seemed that giving love to a brother, innocently or not, fell short of the queen's standards on wickedness. The prince was, after all, a boy.

He became her date at every ball and her escort at every dinner. People talked, of course, when they saw the twins hand-in-hand on the dance floor, but the princess let them talk. There was nothing wicked about it. Nothing sinful. Sometimes she felt like she was drowning, choking on ice water in a dark, cold river, and her brother was the only person willing to rescue her.

The only person who loved her.

Until the prince fell for the wrong girl and the family curse struck him down.

*

The walls of the royal palace began to feel like a prison. Its thorns stung deep, poking at wounds both old and fresh.

(If anything in that place had ever been maple-sweet, it had rotted into nothing long, long ago.)

The princess was alone.

Her other half had been ripped away from her, thanks to the violence of her family's curse. Every generation was destined to lose a twin. Sometimes she wished it had been her instead. Or both of them together, just as they had always been together in life.

She received no sympathy from the queen. She never expected any, but it hurt more than she anticipated. Hurt to be trapped in that gloomy, near-empty palace where the ghost of her brother kept whispering to her through the corridors. She started taking long walks in the garden to escape it. Took up her bow and arrow, like a warrior from a ballad, and launched arrow after arrow into the bulls-eye of her target. Most of the time, she didn't even realize she'd been crying until her last arrow was spent.

She was too busy picturing her mother's face upon the target.

When she escaped into the garden, she enjoyed the roses best. The beauty. The pain. She noticed a serpent one day, sunning itself on the stone wall behind her favorite rosebush. A small serpent, curled into a slender coil, with the most magnificent pink scales. The princess watched it for a while, unafraid, until the serpent slowly raised its head. A tiny forked tongue flickered once, twice. The serpent lowered its head and lay still.

But the princess could feel its eyes on her long after she left the garden.

So she kept coming back.

The pink serpent was always in the garden somewhere, slithering among the rosebushes. Sleeping upon the rocks. Watching the princess from an overhanging branch. It became routine, somehow, to wander the neat garden paths in search of pink scales.

The princess began talking to the serpent.

Reluctantly at first. She felt foolish, like one of those half-mad peasants who slept in alleyways and talked to walls. And she always swore her mother was watching her from the palace, peering down into the garden from a tower window, but that only made her bolder in the end.

She swore the serpent listened.

"I'm not loveless," the princess whispered, cradling her new friend in her hands. "I'm _not_."

The serpent raised itself until it nearly reached the level of the princess' eyes. It held her gaze for an eternity, as if probing into her soul, and she wondered if this was what _snake charming_ truly meant.

With slow, steady movements, the serpent stretched out until it reached the princess' shoulder, then draped itself around her neck.

The princess let out her breath in an almost-happy sigh.

*

Holiday festivities went on as usual at the palace. _Keeping up appearances_ , the queen called it, while she smiled coldly at her court. Only the king's mother, a half-blind crone in a rolling chair, shared the princess' displeasure with this arrangement, but few people paid the old dowager any mind.

With the winter snow came sleigh rides, balls, and concerts, sweetened with enough syrup to give the princess eternal toothache. She still saw her serpent now and then, pink against white. If snakes hibernated, this one apparently didn't.

But the princess soon forgot the serpent when a group of troubadours arrived at the palace for a winter concert. A matching trio of girls, all dark and beautiful and graceful as cats. One girl in particular captivated the princess. When she sang, it felt like all the shadows in the palace had melted away. When her chocolate eyes caught the light, the princess could almost pretend the world's ugliness had vanished. She remembered too late that her mother was always watching. That her mother was just _waiting_ for her to slip up one day.

Naturally, the queen _did_ see everything. And she decided this was the last straw.

"There's only one way to cure such wickedness," the queen declared, alone with her reflection. "If my daughter won't cease these unnatural thoughts, then she simply won't _think_ at all."

Smirking to herself, she held her greatest treasure. Her greatest weapon.

A candy apple coated in maple syrup.

*

_Have some dessert, my dear._

Innocent words from a maid bearing a tray. One of the old, gray maids with vulture's claws for hands. The princess took her dessert, eyes still fixed upon the troubadour purring in the lamplight, and took one sticky bite.

One bite was enough.

A startled hush gathered around the fallen princess. She lay crumpled at the heart of the winter ball, face carved from marble. Her wide red skirts pooled around her like far too much blood.

The maid was promptly thrown in the dungeon, upon the queen's orders.

"We can't have a murderer loose in the palace," she reasoned, raising her silver goblet for a final sip of wine.

(Her satisfied smile was caught in the reflection.)

Few people mourned the princess, for she displayed a heart of ice and a tongue that could cut souls into ribbons. She would have been buried in a common crypt, sealed away and forgotten, if not for her grandmother, the old dowager.

"Let her rest in the garden she loved best," said the dowager, half-blind but firm in her decision.

She ordered a glass coffin for the princess and had it erected in the snowy center of the garden, where dead rosebushes grew in a circle. There the princess lay beneath her lid of glass, eyes closed to the weak winter sun. Now and then, when her old bones allowed it, the dowager gathered fresh flowers from the conservatory and laid them upon the glass, but she was the only to pay her respects.

Aside from a lone garden serpent with bright pink scales.

*

Weeks passed. The queen put on a great show of mourning, draping herself in finery as black as her heart. Relatives poured in from beyond the kingdom to gain their majesties' favor, for the maple empire was now left without an heir. The snow remained, though it no longer fell from the sky. Melted ice ran off the glass coffin, exposing the deceased princess within. She appeared as fresh as ever in her beautiful death; hair still the color of autumn leaves, lips painted red as blood.

(And deep inside, where no one saw, her nightmares were black as endless night.)

The faithful serpent visited daily and slithered up the coffin to rest upon its lid. It seemed to gaze imploringly through the glass, as if begging the princess to break free, but there was nothing a mere serpent could do.

One day the old dowager went out with her servants for her weekly trek into the snow-white garden. She found the serpent coiled upon the kid, pink scales glittering in the frosty afternoon. The serpent raised its head, tongue testing the air, and sensed the dowager was no enemy.

In the white world of the garden, the dowager stared at the serpent and serpent stared back. With her good eye, the dowager caught the serpent making an unusual movement: it appeared to tap the glass lid with the end of its tail, over and over. It would pause to gaze at the princess, turn its tiny dark eyes back to the dowager, and resume tapping the lid.

The dowager thought she perceived the message.

"Open the coffin," she ordered her attendants. "I wish to touch my granddaughter's face one last time."

The servants were used to the half-mad whims of an old crone and quickly obeyed. As soon as the glass lid swung upward, exposing the princess to winter's bittersweet chill, the serpent slipped inside the coffin. It slithered across the blood-red folds of the princess' dress and came to rest at the frost-white hollow of her throat. With all the gentleness of a summer breeze, the serpent coiled itself around the princess' neck and _pressed_ until something gave way.

With a cough and a sputter, the princess hacked up the candy apple that had ended her life. Bewildered, she sat up in her glass box and gulped back the breath that was stolen from her. The servants immediately went to their knees while the dowager came closer in her rolling chair, wheels crunching on the thin snow.

"How did I come to be in this place?" the princess gasped, still growing used to her newly-found breath. "Last I knew, I was deep in the clutches of a fiendish nightmare."

The dowager pointed her gnarled hand at the princess' neck, where a coil of pink scales glittered like a necklace. "The serpent saved you."

"Oh." The princess' voice grew soft. "Thank you, my friend."

She gently took the serpent in her hands and pressed red lips to pink scales.

"Thank you," she whispered again.

The serpent disappeared.

A sudden cloud of smoke came and went, leaving behind twogirls seated in the coffin, where there had previously been one. The second girl wore a jacket that glimmered like snakeskin and had hair as pink as the setting sun.

"You've repaid me a thousand times over, princess," said the serpent-girl, "by freeing me from a dreadful curse. Your mother is not the only witch in these parts."

The princess' blood-red lips curved into a smile. "She's not the only one with a taste for punishment, either." She turned to the dowager, peering into her good eye. "I suppose it was the queen who played this cruel trick upon me?"

When the dowager confirmed this was true, the princess smiled even wider. She took the serpent-girl by the hands and held on tight.

Both of them felt warmth in spite of the snow. The serpent-girl gazed into the eyes of the princess and saw destiny staring back at her. But she saw other things as well: pain as white as lightning, anger as red as hot coals, and loneliness as black as a cavern.

"We'll make her pay," the princess whispered, breath misting in the air between them. " _Together_."

The serpent-girl returned her smile. "And they lived happily ever after.”


End file.
